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Food for thought: Cleaning out the fridge

When my daughter arrives home from college, her first order of business, after greeting us, is to open the refrigerator. Typically, she pauses a moment to admire the well-stocked shelves. Then she delves in.

She shuffles the mustard containers and pickle jars and peers deep into the nether regions until, inevitably, she pulls out some mysterious foodstuff encased in tin-foil or plasticware.

“Is this edible, or is this one of those things?” she’ll ask. By which she means, is this some mummifying food product that all the full-time residents of our home know should not be consumed, but haven’t yet gotten around to throwing away?

Usually I say, “Just be safe, throw that away.” Sometimes, though, I hold up my hands and, before she does the unthinkable, shout: “Don’t even open it!” I have come to fear the biological consequences of unzipping certain queerly-hued Ziplock bags.

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Now that the holidays are here and our refrigerator is chock-full of festive leftovers, I must ask myself this question: How many of them will turn red and green before my daughter comes home for Christmas break?

Let me tell you, I’ve lost to mold more chestnuts than I’ve ever roasted on an open fire. I’m not proud of this fact, but I know I’m not alone. A report released earlier this year by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that Americans throw away 40 percent of the food supply every year.

While grocery stores and restaurants account for a portion of that, American families bear much of the blame. The report found that the average family of four tosses in its trash bin up to $2,275 annually in food. That amounts to 25 percent of the groceries they bring home.

That’s disturbing. What’s more troubling is the fact that, by my husband’s estimation, we are an above-average American family when it comes to food waste. He has long hypothesized, in a grumbling sort of way, that “we throw away half of what we buy.”

Do we, though? Really? Let’s take a look at what’s in my refrigerator and find out.

In the produce drawer we have two kiwi fruit that were labeled “Ripe” when I bought them — over a month ago. Hmm. Maybe we shouldn’t eat those. Also in there, a few desiccated baby carrots and a handful of plums approaching prune-hood.

Moving now to the dairy compartment, there appears to be significantly less food waste. But there is one leftover slice of deli cheese that has taken on the texture of a Tupperware lid. Oh, and wait a minute, a baggie here contains the end of a package of mozzarella cheese whose edges have turned a garish shade of purple.

Now, for the back of the refrigerator, tenanted by the usual crop of Chinese food boxes half-full of hardened rice, cans of partly used tomato paste fringed with black, and an array of small portions enshrouded in baggies that I do not have the courage to unwrap.

Clearly, there’s food for thought here. And room for improvement. But, before resolving to change my ways, I decided to look into the consequences a bit. Is it a big deal, really, to squander half a can of tomato paste, some over-ripe produce and whatever single portions go uneaten every week?

In fact, I discovered that food waste has a pretty serious environmental impact. According to the NRDC, uneaten food piling up in landfills accounts for the nation’s largest component of municipal waste and 25 percent of methane emissions.

It has a social impact, as well. While many American families, like mine, are blithely ignoring their kiwi fruit, others don’t know where their food is coming from each day.

The question now, of course, is how can I change my wasteful ways? I’m pretty sure I won’t follow some of the recommendations I’ve read for reducing food waste. I don’t hope to have a better organized refrigerator, or to create and abide by a weekly meal plan.

But I already compost my vegetable scraps and rotting produce. And I could make an effort to shop more thoughtfully, avoiding produce stamped with the word “Ripe,” when I know I won’t have time to eat it right away.

My favorite suggestion, though, involved having a weekly meal comprised of leftovers. Why not pull together all those single portions from previous meals, reheat them and call it dinner?

Now there’s an idea I can live with: save money, save the planet, clean out the fridge, but most importantly, once a week, I won’t have to cook.

Laura Catalano is a freelance journalist. Her column appears monthly in The Mercury.